Barely 24 hours after the Rev. Liz Walker told UMass Dartmouth grads that what the world needs now is more grace and civility, I stopped at one of the stores where I sometimes shop.

Running my purchases through the self-checkout, I noticed that the clerk on duty was a bright, articulate kid I often chat with.

Well, he's not really a kid ... he's probably passed the Big 2-0 .. and I've found out along the way that he is a UMass Dartmouth student.

I've also learned that he is a huge Montreal Canadiens fan, for which I forgive him because he's an otherwise nice guy.

And to prove I can be nice, too, I decided to congratulate him on the Habs' playoff victory over the Bruins a couple of days before.

Ever gracious, he said, "It went seven games," adding that there was "nothing better" than when Boston and Montreal play.

He then went off to tend to another shopper and when he returned, he began bagging the items I'd scanned.

He also quietly began telling me about a not-so-pleasant customer who'd been in earlier in the day.

The person in question had also used the self-scanner and he was buying some stuff that was on sale. For reasons I don't completely understand, sometimes the sale price is reflected immediately; other times, it's adjusted at the end. In his case, it was the latter.

Either way, it's no big deal. However, said customer apparently thought otherwise. When the price he expected didn't come up right away, he called the clerk over.

And promptly began berating him.

This very polite, very friendly young man told me that he tried to explain how the system worked — and that if the price didn't come up correctly, he'd be more than happy to adjust it.

The poor kid wasted his breath.

Instead of chilling — and realizing how nasty he was being — The Guy kept at it, launching into a tirade about stupid people, stupid technology, how nobody-knows-nothin' — you get the idea.

And the poor clerk bore the brunt of it. It bothered him, he said. A lot. So much so that hours later he was still trying to figure out what he might have done differently to placate the man.

"It's not you," I told him. "You're always pleasant, you're great."

But I could see he was still upset.

The truth is, I said, while most folks are basically decent, there are some real jerks out there — angry people who are so miserable in their own skins that the venom within them rushes to the surface at the slightest provocation. Real or imagined.

And there's not anything anyone can do or say to keep that from happening.

Just like there's nothing anyone can say or do to get words like "grace" and "civility" into their vocabulary.